


Faces

by Akhaste (Sairamire)



Category: True Detective
Genre: 1998/ Post-Canon (2014), Alternating Timelines, Angst, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Case Fic, Established relationship in 2014, Hallucinations, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Murder Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychosis, Supernatural Elements, Synesthesia, Violence, halloween fic, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-08 07:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16425311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sairamire/pseuds/Akhaste
Summary: "Nah, I could always tell what was real and what wasn't."That was a lie.





	1. Real Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> October 1, 1998.  
> Rust sees it for the first time.  
> (NOTE: Chapter has been majorly revised 11/24/18)

**OCTOBER 1ST, 1998**

The first time he sees it, Rust damn well _knows_ that it’s one of his visions.

That doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

It was at the cusp of October, anticipation for Autumn and excitement over Halloween brimming in the air, though it was much too early for both. Rust participated in neither and actively avoided the latter. Same couldn’t be said for the Hart family—not with Audrey and Maisie’s inextinguishable holiday spirits. They had convinced their less enthusiastic parents to go Halloween shopping over the weekend, excitedly dragging them along the isles with all sorts of costumes and decorations, and by Monday they were fully equipped for Halloween except the candies. The day before October, the girls forced Marty to put up orange lights over the roof, which he wasn’t too happy about and thus complained about the next morning at the station.

Rust didn’t engage, but he also didn’t try to stop Marty. Better to let him talk it out than to make it awkward between them, or, worse, to explain to him why Halloween wasn’t a good subject. Marty caught onto it eventually, from the lack of response and the distant look Rust got whenever something reminded him of Sophia, and he trailed off to an uncomfortable silence with a guilty look on his face.

That was when, to their relief, the Jackson parish sheriff called them in for a 419 assist. The relief soon turned sour when the tone in the sheriff’s voice suggested some fucked-up nature of the crime scene. There weren’t many details that the sheriff offered them about it, but they braced themselves for what they were about to see nevertheless. The scene of the crime, a white single family home with blue window frames, was almost deceptively normal, except the shadow looming about in the open hole of an entrance where the door was completely knocked over. The hole functioned as well as a door, however, as it made the idea of entering the house far less desirable—not that the door did much in the first place, evidently.

They crossed that threshold, the sheriff leading them in. The overwhelming scent of blood greeted them immediately, so thick in the air that they felt like they were being drenched in it. It didn’t take them too long to locate the source of the offending stench.

Marty looked like he was ready to vomit. To Rust, though, the scene was almost too familiar.

The body lacked a face, the skin ripped off and the muscle underneath laid bare. The visible contortion of the face muscles, however, made the terror of his final moment clear. His entire torso was a mix of red and brown from the dried blood smeared and extended beyond his shoulders like wings, which highlighted the gaping black hole in his chest.

 _Heart’s been ripped out_ , the sheriff said.

It looked more like a work of a wild animal than a man, but Rust knew better than to assume that. He’d seen strikingly similar bodies, all reduced to that state by men who didn’t even flinch in the act, memories of which were archived in vivid flashes that lurked behind every step and threatened to leap out at the slightest reminder. A closer observation supported his early assumption. The clean edge marking where the skin was stripped off the face, the bruise on the neck in the shape of a hand, and the overall convoluted sense of art all pointed to a human touch, one full of history and routine.

The bruise on the neck perhaps could have been a hint of mercy that spared him from the agony of being skinned and cut open. The expression, if he could call it that, on the victim’s face and the copious amount of blood from the cut in the chest suggested otherwise. His final moment was spent in excruciating pain. The only consolidation—death had relieved him from it in the end. Rust spared this thought from Marty.

"Y'all ID him yet?" Rust asked, turning his attention from the body to the blood on the floor. Marty, who was taking photographs of the torso, took his eyes off the camera and turned toward the sheriff.

“Name's Beau LeBon.” The sheriff held out LeBon's driver's license for them to see. “Age 24. He’d been living with his uncle, James Landry, but he and his wife were out of town down in Hammond last night. They found the body when they came back in the morning.

24\. Rust took a moment to process that number. The picture on the license showed a young man’s face with a boyishness that was yet to fade, a lively image that was difficult to match with the skinless chunk of stiff muscles that was before them. A fitting juxtaposition, perhaps, between life and death. Marty’s eyes remained on the picture, Rust’s on the body.

“The uncle and his wife, where are they now?” Rust asked, “Anything to confirm they weren’t here at the time of the murder?”

“A receipt from the hotel they stayed at, checkout time about an hour and a half before they called us. That’s about how long it takes to drive there, so it checks out. They're at our station right now giving their statements." The sheriff paused, then added, "I wouldn’t consider them suspects, if you ask me. They looked real shocked about all this.”

Rust hummed in response, standing up as he took off his gloves. “Any idea where the missing parts are?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Nope.”

“Witnesses?”

“None, at least not in the neighborhood.”

The sheriff’s specification of the ‘neighborhood’ did not sit well with neither Rust nor Marty, as it hinted at his acknowledgment of the possibility that there were witnesses outside of the neighborhood and his apparent lack of care to try investigating it.

“Did anyone say something about who might've done this? Known history of personal conflicts, feuds, anything of the sort?”

“Nuh-uh. I mean, we assumed he was killed by an animal or something until one of the officers suggested that maybe he wasn’t. We haven’t really been asking around about that stuff yet.”

Rust’s eyes flashed a cold glare at the sheriff’s aloofness before they returned to the faceless body. Marty, aware of his partner’s building annoyance, dreaded the next words that would come out of his mouth.

"You telling me there's only one goddamn officer here who actually takes the time to look at the crime scene?"

Rust didn’t bother looking up at the sheriff’s offended face and instead opened his ledger and began compiling his notes. Marty sighed, thinking of many other ways Rust could have approached this to avoid being hated by yet another sheriff. _You really had to?_ Marty gave Rust the look, which he only acknowledged with a blink.  Shifting uncomfortably between his partner and the angry sheriff, Marty wished that everybody would just pretend like Rust hadn’t said anything, keep things from getting worse, less damage for him to fix later. Of course, that wasn’t how things went.

"Just who do you think you are, talking to me like that?" the sheriff fumed, "I’m the goddamn sheriff, I've been in the force for the past twenty years—"

"Twenty years in the force and you fucking missed that hand-shaped bruise? Real fine police work."

Rust's voice remained indifferent and low, but the sharpness buried inside was enough to shut up the sheriff. The sheriff stormed out of the house with a reddened face and flaring nose, rousing some dirty looks and not-so-discrete chatters toward Rust from the officers surrounding the scene. This was worse than Marty had anticipated. Facing some level of incompetence was a constant wherever they went to work, and Rust usually resolved his annoyance in sulking silence or maybe with a snide remark unless the incompetence was actively interfering with the case. That caused some trouble, sure, some difficulties getting along with other officers, but it didn’t reach the level of hostility like he did with the sheriff.

“You ever consider not antagonizing everyone in sight?” Marty scowled. Being here was intolerable enough as it was without Rust feeling the need to add another thick layer of social discomfort in the air. “Now I gotta deal with that shit.”

Rust blatantly ignored him.

Deciding that he couldn’t stand spending another second there, Marty stepped out of the scene to get some fresh air that didn’t reek of blood, trying to diffuse some of the resentment meanwhile by making some conversation with the sheriff. He waited to see if Rust would follow him outside. He was clearly in a bad mood and some fresh air would certainly do him good, or so Marty thought.

Rust didn’t take a single break, though, not even to smoke. He needed to keep working. That’s what Marty did not yet understand, that what his mind would do in idleness would be far more destructive for him than breathing the vomit-inducing air and staring at that fucked up remnant of a person. So Rust remained inside and kept himself busy, jotting down observations, sketching some details, and noting some questions to follow up on.

Marty came back in after a while, gagging at the air. He marveled at Rust’s mechanic composure with a bit of horror on his face, completely unaware of the desperation behind it. To him, it seemed that investigating the murder in this horrific scene was no different to Rust from, say, standing in line to purchase some ground coffee from a Piggly Wiggly. He thought, if it came to it, Rust wouldn’t mind living here, with the corpse and all. More or less a joke of a thought to himself, but he didn’t realize how close he was to getting it. The only missing part was the resignation. This was where Rust would be, a place that he had to live in now among other places that his memory had stored, wherever he physically was. It didn’t matter if he was here or outside, the metallic stench, the skinless face, the blood spread upon the floor—they’d follow him.

Rust began to relay his initial deductions to Marty as he finished up. Marty questioned where there seemed to be some leap in logic and agreed to what made sense, but all he could really think about was when he’d finally be able to get out.

***

Neither of them talked on their ride back. It wasn’t that Marty didn’t want to talk, whatever he may have said in the past about “place of silent reflection” and all. After all, Marty didn’t handle silence very well. It was him who initiated most conversations in their car rides, Rust barely responding with occasional bursts of smartassery that made Marty regret ever getting him to talk. Not ideal, of course, but that was better for Marty than sitting through hours of silence. Not today, though. Rust never seemed to be in a mood to talk, but today he looked like he’d stab someone for bidding him a simple ‘hello’.

Marty wondered if it had anything to do with their little mishap in the morning before dismissing the idea. If anything, Rust looked apologetic behind the thick neutrality on his face in the moment of silence that persisted until the call came. Marty threw a quick glance at Rust, who was looking out the window with his knuckle pressed to his lips, face hard to read except the default pissed look of his. A usual sight, except the white of his knuckles. It posed such a stark contrast to the unbreakable composure that Rust had that it almost incited to Marty the consideration of _fear_. He stopped himself from thinking further on the notion and shoved it away as a ridiculous thought, uneasy of its implications.

But the truth was what Marty had instinctively perceived. Rust’s composure was a facade that consumed everything he had, the only thing that kept him from a complete breakdown. Without something to do, what LeBon had triggered was finally taking its full shape. Reality slipped away from his grasp like sand, his memories hovering before his eyes. The blood, the gargled screams, the faceless people. Allow a single tremor to escape, and that was all his world would to be. So he kept his expression neutral and his posture steady. He kept his eyes open as long as he could because the images sharpened when he closed them. He counted his breaths and measured their intervals. The alternative, he could not afford.

As Rust struggled to stay in the reality, the unspoken tension in the silence finally became too much for Marty. He attributed it to boredom, but in reality it was his subconscious worry that built up over Rust.

“Can you believe this shit? First it’s the goddamn antlers, and now this,” Marty scoffed bleakly, though his tone carried a slight touch of humor—a doomed attempt to lighten things up. “Just three weeks ‘till Halloween, too. ‘Guess this is the real Halloween shit this time.”

Rust did not respond, but he flexed his body to look less tense than he knew he was looking at the moment. He felt Marty’s eyes on him, the anticipation for a response soon turning into annoyance at the lack of it. Marty shook his head slightly as he turned his gaze back to the road. He seemed to be dropping the idea of having a conversation for a second, but his spite raised its head and changed resignation into a stronger determination.

“I mean, you ever see anything like—” Marty started and shut up right away, the words _cut around the face, yank down, rip your face off_ whirling back into his mind, the story Rust told about the ‘routine’ in the cartel. _Fuck_ , he thought, wishing he could shove the words back into his mouth. Something clicked in him at the reminder, and the earlier observation he had made about Rust that he initially rejected began to make sense. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to—. Forget I said anything.”

Rust didn’t hear any of that, though, because at that moment, out the window, he saw it.

A figure—anatomy grotesquely resembling a human with thinly stretched arms and legs moving like insects, covered in layers of rotting skin that clearly did not belong to it—staring at him from the woods with white eyes buried deep under the layers of faces.

He drew in a sharp breath, unable to look away. _A vision, I’m seeing things._ He desperately thought to himself. _That ain’t real._ His hand clutched at the door, in need of something solid to hold. But the solidity against his palm dissipated as that thing tilted its head and its mouth widened to what seemed like it was supposed to be a smile. It’s so wrong, so void underneath the sick grey color of stolen flesh, that nauseating face, the impossible angle of its neck. He held his breath till his lungs burned, trying not to let a single sound escape as it approached closer, closer, _closer, and—_

“—Hey.”

Marty’s voice rang through the mad haze and pulled him back into reality. Rust blinked to see that the road was empty except their car. He shakily let out the breath he’d been holding, closing his eyes.  As he adjusted back to his control, his brain finally processed that Marty had called him. Rust opened his eyes and turned his head toward Marty’s concerned face with half-closed lids and a feigned nonchalance, as if he weren’t just panicking from the most fucked up hallucination he’d seen in the last couple of years.

“What?”

Marty gave him a suspicious look, but he resolved with, “Nothin’. Never mind.”

 _That wasn’t real._ Rust assured himself, leaning back toward the window. _It’s just a vision._

_Just a vision._

He held onto that thought like it was the last thing tethering him to reality.


	2. Callings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OCTOBER 23rd, 2014  
> Memories of past, called to present.

**OCTOBER 23rd, 2014**

There is something in the air, like something’s waiting to happen.

Rust wakes up earlier than usual to the midnight blue. His eyes open to a feeling of anticipation—for what, exactly, he can’t tell. There is also the urge to do something, anything, the anxious restlessness which he has not had for a while. He tries to lean toward the nightstand to check the time, only to realize that Marty’s arms are wrapped tightly around his waist. After testing if he could move without waking him up, Rust decides to lay still, at least till morning. Marty has been doing that pretty often lately, though he hasn’t realized because Rust is always up and about before him. Not that Rust has a problem with it. Marty’s always warm, and he doesn’t mind that.

Out the window, everything is submerged in its own shadow, yet to be touched by the bloody red of sunrise. There is the sense of solemnity that reigns in silence. This is a landscape that Rust is familiar with, from the years of sleepless nights he spent beyond count, the only time Rust can find a complete calm away from the noises of the day overloading his senses. How quickly he blends back into this realm makes him feel somehow far away from Marty despite their physical proximity, like they belong to two different worlds: Marty in daylight and warmth and he in the in-between space between day and night. The thought feeds the discordant note in the back of his mind that this is not where he belongs, that whatever’s between he and Marty won’t—can’t—go on much longer.

That feeling is still heavy in him as morning comes, blue of the air being slowly replaced by the loud orange that announces the coming of the sun. By the time color is restored to the world in its vibrant hues under sunlight, Marty wakes up and Rust is outside the living room busying himself with one of the case files from their PI firm.  

“Mornin’.” Still groggy from sleep, Marty wobbles out onto the living room and frowns when he finds Rust, already dressed and ready, sitting on the sofa with his ledger open. “You realize it’s 6:30 in the morning, yeah?”

“Mmhm,” Rust replies, looking up at Marty, “Water's boiled in the pot.”

Marty makes his way over to the counter and pours hot water into his mug after putting in a tea bag. “You been up a while?

“Couldn’t sleep.”

A lot of questions spring into Marty's mind at that, but since Rust doesn’t seem so inviting to that sort of conversation at the moment, he settles with, “What case you got there?”

“The one with the forged wills.”

“You mean the one with all the suicides and shit?”

“Yeah.”

“What a _great_ read for morning, Rust.”

“Well, the case ain’t gonna solve itself, morning or not.”  

Marty sits down next to Rust, taking a look at the detailed notes he wrote down. “Yeah, but you could have worked the one about the dog instead. That one hasn’t got any dead people involved.”

Rust continues to shift through the files without responding, so Marty just watches him work. Something isn’t right about him today. Marty knows because Rust’s facade doesn’t fool him anymore. He feels the strange distance that Rust is keeping between them, but he doesn’t push further.

Just about when Rust finishes writing down points of further investigation, the sharp ring of the phone stabs through the air, and Marty almost jumps off the couch. Alarmed and wary, Rust’s fingers tighten around his pen. His tense eyes follow Marty as he goes with a murmur of _who calls this fucking early_ and picks it up. He puts down the phone after a short while with an unenthusiastic  _Alright, We’ll be there._

Marty sighs as he turns to Rust’s questioning look.

“It’s Gilbough. They need our help.”

***

“Y’all looking to charge me with another murder with this _consultation_?” Rust half-jokes as Papania and Gilbough lead them into the exact same conference room where they questioned him about the Lange case two years ago. Marty scoffs.

Not a lot has changed since—Papania’s actually wearing the same shirt he wore in that so-called consultation. The space itself has remained exactly the same except the file containers that have been moved around or cleaned out.  What changed, though, is the people. There are visible changes like Rust’s clean-shaven face and much shorter hair, a new scar on Gilbough’s arm, and Papania’s stubble that’s been growing out for a couple of days. The atmosphere between them is a more subtle change.

“No, we're not—we said we were sorry about that multiple times.” Papania looks somewhat amused and mostly annoyed. He takes the seat with Gilbough across Rust and Marty, then says, “You really holding on to that grudge, huh?”

“Well, what’s this about?” Marty’s voice is light and casual with a hint of worry underneath. “You sounded real urgent on the phone.”

The younger detectives exchange a look, and Gilbough carefully opens the case file in front of him as if he's afraid that something would leap out of it. “You remember Beau LeBon?”

“The faceless corpse. 1998,” Rust recounts, slow and contemplative, “He was actually missing both his face and his heart, but the newspapers were set on the missing face. 'Suppose 'faceless and heartless corpse' is a bit mouthful.”

“Yeah, him.”

“What about LeBon?” Marty asks, but Rust already has pieced together the answer to the question. The vague anxiety that's been there since morning attaches itself to a cause in Rust's mind, and a certain dread settles.

A picture gets passed across the table from Gilbough, and when Rust picks it up to look, it’s like he’s back in Landry’s house in 1998, LeBon’s body lying in the middle of the living room: the expertly removed face, the wings drawn with blood, and the gaping hole in the chest. The only distinguishable difference is the different color of the walls in the background. Marty’s lips tighten as Rust calmly pushes the picture away.

Rust sees something in it—an unmistakable call to return, one he cannot look away from.

“Can you tell us about him?” Gilbough asks.

Rust abides.


End file.
